The following is a re-print of the April 2026 edition of Shift Storm, the CCPA’s monthly newsletter which focuses on the intersection of work and climate change. Click here to subscribe to Shift Storm and get the latest updates straight to your inbox as soon as they come out.
There is a lot to unpack in the federal government’s announcement this week of a $25 billion sovereign wealth fund.
I called it a glorified mutual fund in the National Observer, so I suppose you can count me among the skeptics. But not because we don’t need something like it.
The problem is that this new Canada Strong Fund is being designed as a funhouse mirror version of the actually successful sovereign wealth funds in other oil-rich countries such as Norway, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In those countries, the public captures a large share of oil revenues (through various mechanisms) and then reinvests that money into economic diversification. The whole point of these sovereign wealth funds is to insulate the domestic economy against the high volatility and long-term risks associated with resource extraction (more on that below).
The Canada Strong Fund promises to do essentially the opposite. It will take public money and invest it into domestic infrastructure, including resource extraction. That’s doubling down on our current economic model rather than diversifying away from it.
It is especially perplexing in light of the massive windfall profits currently being enjoyed by the domestic oil and gas industry. David Macdonald and I have estimated that Canadian oil companies are banking profits of $1.5 billion per week right now, which is three times more than they were making before the war in Iran. At this rate, the industry will earn profits of $90 billion over the next 12 months.
That’s profiteering. It’s also an absurd amount of money to be leaving on the table when Canada has urgent economic needs. An excess profits tax on the oil industry could pay for the Canada Strong Fund twice over this year and the oil industry would still bank $40 billion in profits.
A sovereign wealth fund seeded with excess oil profits would be a far better model for Canada. With a mandate to invest in genuine economic diversification, including affordability measures for households impacted by high fuel prices, it could also contribute to the “elbows up” agenda the federal government used to be so fond of.
Details of the Canada Strong Fund will be worked out over the next few months. We’ll be pushing for the government to do it right.
Storm surge: this month’s key reads
The latest oil crisis puts another nail in the oil industry’s coffin
It feels paradoxical at a moment when oil company profits are climbing to such eye-watering heights, but the current spike in oil prices driven by U.S. and Israeli aggression in Iran is worsening the long-term outlook for oil demand and accelerating global decarbonization efforts.
The upshot, according to the UK-based consultancy Wood Mackenzie, is that a prolonged disruption to Middle East oil production could cause an additional 20 per cent decline in oil demand beyond what was already expected in the coming decades.
This is not merely future speculation. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air documents the many countries already responding to the oil shock by reducing their dependence on fossil fuels. The UK is decarbonizing housing, for example, while countries such as Egypt and South Korea are accelerating plans for renewable energy. The European Commission is developing a new Electrification Action Plan to get the bloc off fossil fuels even faster than before. Unsurprisingly, China’s exports of solar panels and batteries spiked to historic highs last month.
All of this is happening in the context of a clean energy revolution that was already accelerating. For the first time in history, renewables produced more power than coal last year, according to the latest Global Electricity Review from the think tank Ember. Fossil fuels consumption in the global power sector is now in active decline.
As I write this, more than 50 countries are gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia for the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. I’ll do a deeper dive next month, but the takeaway is already clear: global momentum on energy is moving in only one direction. Due to the war in Iran, it is now moving even faster.
Research radar: the latest developments in work and climate
Canada’s emissions progress stalled in 2024. Canada’s latest official greenhouse gas inventory finds that overall greenhouse gas emissions plateaued in 2024 after falling the year before. Emissions from oil and gas production increased by five per cent year-over-year. The sector remains the biggest source of emissions in the country.
Economic development through megaprojects doesn’t happen by accident. An article published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, “Megaprojects, Industrial Policy and the Real Test of ‘Building Canada Strong’,” points out that massive infrastructure projects are not automatically nation-building projects. For starters, for megaprojects to actually benefit communities, those communities need to be involved in the planning. There also need to be mechanisms to keep some of the economic value of those projects in the region itself. It’s a helpful piece for understanding the pitfalls of a private-sector-led industrial strategy.
Just workforce transitions don’t happen by accident either. The Pembina Institute published Sustainable Jobs in B.C., which reports back on workshops conducted with workers and other stakeholders in the province. The big takeaway is that a just transition for workers into clean industries won’t happen by accident. It requires a proactive, coordinated effort between governments, employers and training institutions.
The energy transition is a net job creator. Speaking of green jobs, Jim Stanford has prepared an “Annotated Bibliography on the Net Employment Benefits of the Energy Transition,” a useful collection of sources making the case for the benefits to workers of moving away from fossil fuels.
Affordability is the key argument for climate action in the U.S. today. The U.S.-based Climate and Community Institute released Stop Greed, Build Green, a powerful and hopeful framework for tackling the climate and affordability crises in tandem. It introduces “green economic populism” as a strategic framework for progressives to build on. The core ideas aren’t new—provide economic relief to households, regulate industry, invest in the public sector, build green infrastructure—but it’s a well-structured and insightful summary of progressive climate thinking today.
Nuclear power has failed to live up to the hype for half a century. A really interesting paper in the journal Energy Research & Social Science, “The ‘Nuclear Energy Paradox’,” investigates 50 years of overoptimistic assumptions about the proliferation of nuclear power. These “nuclear imaginaries,” as the paper calls them, persist today. Many governments, including Canada’s, assume nuclear energy will play a far greater role in the future energy system than history (or economics) suggests is likely. At the end of the day, nuclear energy is just way too expensive compared to other sources of power.
Scotland’s energy transition looking less just by the day. Since its very first issue, this newsletter has closely followed the Scottish just transition program. Scotland’s Just Transition Commission, in particular, offered a global model for proactive energy transition planning. And yet, as a new article in the journal Renewal argues, Scotland has largely fumbled the transition of the Grangemouth Oil Refinery. The crux of the issue, as just transition advocates (including the Scottish commission!) have long argued, is that new jobs must be created before the old ones are lost. But in their deference to private capital, Scottish governments lacked the tools to create those alternatives.
Despite renewables potential, Tunisia’s green transition is struggling. A paper published by the Transnational Institute, Tunisia’s Green Industrial Policy, documents the failure of state “just transition” policies to translate into positive change on the ground. The paper highlights the twin legacies of colonialism and neoliberalism that have gutted Tunisia’s capacity to pivot economically. A powerful reminder that not every country has Canada’s enviable capacity for transition.
Even the World Bank is on board with industrial policy. After decades of championing the primacy of global markets, the World Bank released a surprising new book, Industrial Policy for Development, that argues the exact opposite. “Industrial policy is far more replicable than previously thought,” the authors suggest, “and it should be considered in the national policy toolkit of all countries.” That’s an important conclusion coming from an institution like this. Not only does industrial policy offer various social, environmental and political benefits, as we’ve long argued, but it turns out to be pretty good economics as well.
Dark clouds: artificial intelligence on the horizon
AI is not delivering on its productivity promise for Canadian companies. A rather dry-looking study from Statistics Canada researchers, Artificial intelligence adoption and productivity in Canadian firms, arrives at the remarkable conclusion that “there is no statistically significant direct association between AI adoption and productivity” in Canada. The authors note (and I agree) that it may take more time for productivity benefits to be realized, so it’s not necessarily the case that AI tools are unproductive. But it’s a vital reminder that AI is not magic. Merely adopting AI for its own sake, as many institutions seem to be doing, does not automatically produce benefits.
To serve workers, AI development must involve workers. A brief from the AFL-CIO, Without Robust Guardrails, AI Harms Workers, lays out eight demands for worker protection in the age of AI. The one that stands out to me is the need for workers to have a seat at the table in AI development. A commentary published by the Brookings Institution, “A people-first vision for the future of work in the age of AI,” arrives at a similar conclusion. The “co-design” of AI systems with workers increases the odds that these systems actually serve workers rather than degrading or replacing them.
The AI bubble looms large over massive new infrastructure spending. My colleague Simon Enoch continues his excellent series on the infrastructure behind the AI boom with “What happens to data centres when the AI bubble pops?” There is a real risk—especially in the U.S. but increasingly in Canada—that the data centre industry has grown “too big to fail” and the public will be on the hook if it all comes crashing down.
Activists gather in Montreal to push back on the AI industry. The Civil Society Summit on the AI Industry is taking place in Montreal on May 22 and it promises to bring together a diverse group of thinkers and activists who are usually left out of the AI conversation. I’ll be there moderating a panel on AI and labour, so come say hi!
